Saturday, April 07, 2007

Book meme

1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen) Sense and Sensibility3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (Rowling)17. Fall on Your Knees(Ann-Marie MacDonald)18. The Stand (Stephen King)19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling)20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)The Silmarillion22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)25 . Life of Pi (Yann Martel)26. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)The Restaurant at the End of The Universe27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)The Chronicles of Narnia29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)31. Dune (Frank Herbert)32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)34. 1984 (Orwell)35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)45. Bible46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)48. Angela's Ashes (Frank McCourt)Tis49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)50. She's Come Undone (Wally Lamb)51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)53. Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card)54. Great Expectations (Dickens)55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)59. The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood)60. The Time Traveller's Wife (Audrey Niffenegger)61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)69. Les Miserables (Hugo)70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)71. Bridget Jones' Diary (Fielding)72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)73. Shogun (James Clavell)74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)78. The World According To Garp (John Irving)79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)80. Charlotte's Web (E.B. White)81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)84. Wizard's First Rule (Terry Goodkind)85. Emma (Jane Austen)86. Watership Down (Richard Adams)87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)Rumble Fish97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)100. Ulysses (James Joyce)

Re: Ulysses: I tried. Gawd, I swear I did.

Of the rest, some I'm ashamed that I haven't. Some I thumbed through and couldn't give a whit if I ever read 'em again (Anne Rice does that to me. I don't mean to criticize y'all who like her stuff, but it doesn't do a damned thing for me. I found myself flipping through, looking for the "good parts."). Some of them I've thumbed through, but couldn't really say I've read (eg: White Oleander, World According To Garp). Others, I believe that I've finished, but in piecemeal. (e.g.: The Bible.) Others, I simply can't remember ever reading, though surely I did...? (e.g.: East of Eden) Lots, I mean to read, and have a certain satisfaction that I still can. Ever realized that you're reading the last of a favorite author's repetoire? (Raise your hand if you turned the last page of To Sail Beyond The Sunset with slow regret?)

I agree with Ambulance Driver that there's a lot left out.

Just randomly, some books that either should be on the list or represent some interesting reading from recent authors:

3 Comments:

Funny, but that list of books makes me feel SO under-read, even though I've read some of them. I agree, Screwtape letters should be in there, too.

Interview with the Vampire was superb, but since that smash success, I think her publisher has been fearful of actually editing her work in the way it should be. Her writing is exquisite, but it needs a lot of the excess cut out.

No slam on Anne Rice, but her stuff just doesn't do it for me. Like I say, I'll just take my vampire stories in a ludicrous fashion from Christopher Moore. (Keeping in mind that he doesn't take anything serously.